I love seeing how thoughtful and deeply reasoned posts can still say something new and fresh about WOT after all these years.

I do have some questions still, though, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

It has always been something of a mystery to me how the Aiel have such an apparently huge population, or at least a huge non-productive (warrior) population in the extremely arid conditions that you rightfully see as profoundly shaping their social relations. I have some ideas, but I'm not totally confident. The extreme individualism/mutuality of ji'e'toh makes so much more sense when viewed in the Waste, but this does seem a little undercut by the apparent abundance and even "lushness" of the Holds, which support large populations and some real agriculture. Do we see any evidence that ji'e'toh operates on less individual lines in areas with more permanent settlement and access to water? How does farming work? How is food and water distributed within a Clan or a Society?

And what about social inequality? Social inequality in WOT seems almost completely nonexistent outside of maybe Tear (correct me if I'm wrong), and this has always struck me as rather odd. It is true that the nobles in every kingdom live much better and fancier, but there seems to be no one below a sort of yeoman farmer level of subsistence anywhere in WOT. Real structural poverty or underclasses never appear directly. The miners of Baerlon are probably the closest we get to permanent laborers. Construction labor is largely obviated by the pseudo-magical Ogier. The Seanchan have damane and socially-mobile slaves. Farmers all seem to own their land. The Borderlands manage to feed and clothe massive urban and military populations in the extreme north without much difficulty or social tension. And finally, the Aiel have the Gai'shan (a rather neat way of dealing with labor in the waste).

Because we don't really know what the Wise Ones do with the OP in terms of providing food, water, shelter, etc, it would seem that not only are the Gai'shan an essential part of the Aiel's ability to survive in the waste without slave rebellions, but that their perpetual warfare (which at first glance may seem to be hugely counterproductive) is actually the key to their greater than expected population. Without ji'e'toh and the warrior cultures invested in it, my guess is that there would not be any socially egalitarian way of producing sufficient laborers (Gai'shan) to be the "hewers of wood and drawers of water" or farmers to keep Aiel populations fed and growing.

In many ways, the Aiel and the Seanchan are the only really "realistic" societies we see in WOT, because only they have the means of materially reproducing their populations fully explained. If the Aes Sedai actually did any socially useful work with the OP it would be another thing, but how exactly is it that the wetlands have managed to produce millions of inhabitants living in cities and farms and armies without any really substantial political and economic inequality or struggles? Without endless cyclical debt, farmers have no real reason to overproduce and trade in a regional money economy, but in the wetlands we have mostly free/independent farmers engaging in a money economy without any apparent need to do so. Given all this, maybe I am reading too much into Aiel society, which may be just as unlikely as the rest. But I think understanding the materially (and not just culturally) necessary practice of warfare among the Aiel (in the Waste) to sustain their populations through captive labor, may also help us better understand how the Aiel behave in the wetlands (both as Shaido and as in Aviendha's vision).